RaveNew York Journal of BooksCentral to Valzyhna Mort’s lyrical and at times surreal third book is the question of remembrance, specifically, how to remember and mourn when the state often demands silence ... hauntingly beautiful ... Mort is not simply writing another history of the worst crimes of the past century, she is creating a mythology for how we internalize those crimes at the individual level, and, perhaps, more importantly, the ways in which we both silence, remember, and re-create them as a result ... Mort also colorfully characterizes small town life and its role in creating our personal history ... we live in Mort’s lyric poems, and it is here that her mythologizing genius is most profound ... What is stunning about Mort’s poetry is the way in which she maintains that careful weave of the personal with the historical ... The historical intertwined with the personal, the brutish and inhumane wrapped up in the all-too human, this is the mythology of Valzhyna Mort. A poetry that demonstrates the complexity of human experience.
